Fans of the bendy bus, be of good cheer. The voice of London's transport users, TravelWatch, has concluded there is no case for scrapping bendy buses on some of our busiest routes after its public meeting last week.
The 38, 507 and 521 bendy buses are in jeopardy following Boris and TFL chums' consultation over their articulated future, seeking to fulfill the reckless election promise of binning the bendies. But TravelWatch took a fine tooth comb to the proposals, putting specific questions to TFL about the plans. Lo and behold, it seems there really aren't any significant benefits to changing the bus routes, but on the downside, operational costs would be much higher and, obviously, for the "non-articulated vehicles boarding and alighting will take a little longer at the busiest stops". Meh.
In the absence of any financial, safety or efficiency reasons for straightening out these routes, TravelWatch are campaigning for TFL to ask regular users of the routes in question what they think, since they're the ones crowding on each rush hour, getting caught by the revenue protection officers and doing the 'round the corner shuffle' when hanging on in the concertina sections.
Which opens up the possibility of a rare and interesting opportunity for us passengers to have a good and proper vent about our daily journeys. Feel free to practice purging your personal, emotional and social bus baggage in the comments below, in lieu of an official TFL repository.
Image by KizzieFK.
